THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 234, 3 October 1935, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

It is not infrequently claimed, and very likely justly, that we speak English well. Very likely wc have more time for it, seeing that the rest of BON JOUR! the languages of the world are sealed books to us and nobody ever keeps accents to render stray printed French' word intelligible to a I'renchman. One got a tinkle on the 'phone from a gentleman who said many inquiries had been made about "Lez Misrabulls," and asked present unilinguist if he would mind telling the equally unilingual town how to pronounce "Les Misera-bles." Until, one tries to put it down one does not know how difficult it iff. After long cogitation a.nd reference to theauthorities, one feels that if the stranger to French called it "Lay Mees-eh-rah-bl" he'd get somewhere near it. But if you were to confront a Frenchman with this explanatory spelling for English pronunciation lie would probably think' it was Chinese or Choctaw, Tamil or Australian. If he were told that "Lez Misrabulls" was correct New Zealand he would, of course, accept it as standard French.

The people of- Scotland are being made aware that within immeasurable distance the Stuart dynasty may be restored to the throne of Great Britain. They THE KING ,read, too, that the Stuart FAMILY, family may be the reigning house, in Germany, Austria, Russia and Spain, and very likely in Greece and Montenegro. "The Strathspey Herald and Grantown Advertiser," published at Grantown-on-Spey, in Scotland, quotes the Wellington (N.Z.) "Jacobite," which will, one presumes (if one is Jacobite), effect this stupendous revolution in European rule. The Scottish paper notes that the "Jacobite" claims that if the Jacobite movement had been properly supported we would have been spared the war and the horrors of peace. And the sting is in the tail of the "Strathspey" par: "We imagined that New Zealand, one of the most enlightened of our Dominions, would have been the last place in which cranks of the Jacobite order would have set up a printing press." One merely wonders how Ramsay MiieDonald reacts to the "Jacobite" when he receives it and learns of the chances of the Stuarts as rulers of our Empire.

Bonnie Scotland is getting a wee bit worried about its marriage laws, which are notably, simple, and very likely the black-

smith (who isn't a blackGRETNA GREEN, smith) of the Gretna

Green smithy will have to pafk up his supposititious anvil and chapbook and retire from the scene. And of course the smithy will remain a payable place of resort by romantic tourists and quick-lunch Americans. Gretna Green, to which sighing runaways have run for nuptial nooses for generations, is a village in Dumfriesshire (a mile north-west of Gretna, on Wie English border). It Remains famous because from 1771 to 1856 drregular marriages were performed by the blacksmith, the ferryman or the tollkceper. You have already noted as an Auckland news item that an old-time smithy may be raised at Papakura as a memorial to the pioneer smiths of the community. Excellent notion! All Smiths (with a capital "S") in the community will rightly claim to be joined in this celebration. A world gathering of Smiths round the commemorative smithy would cause heart failure in the Tourist Department. If you erect a smithy to commemorate pioneer blacksmiths you are bound to commemorate plumbers and carpenters, saddlers and ploughmen. If the smiths (and the Smiths) are to be immortalised at Papakura surely we can find a spdt for a pioneer saddler's shop or a wheelwright's yardLet's all be commemorated. The volcanic fervour of Mussolini has reminded many people of Vesuvius; the burning mountain which glows over lovely Naples. The thought of Vesuvius VESUVIUS. makes one 'wonder if the Duee is likely to be as destructive as the mountain has been. The last time one saw the rosy light playing over the old mountain it was a festa day in the old city and the Italians, happiest of all people when in festal mood, were having a floral time and a vinous time and a dancing time —and the carabinieri in flowing cloaks —a devil of a time. Mussolini would be very young then —or not at all. Perhaps he was one of those incessant little devils who plagued the obvious stranger for halfpence—-.who knows? To get to the lower slopes of old Vesuvius was a dusty ride and tramp, and what impressed strangers was that successive generations of determined Italians had clothed the slopes with vineyards, to be ultimately swept away in flows of lava. Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabia, buried so long ago and dug up so many centuries after, would suggest tq the colonial, used to dead or dithering volcanoes, what could happen to. say, Auckland, if Vulcan became locally nasty. In the Naples Museum there is a vitrified gent whose solid fist is' clenched. He had evidently scooted with somebody's cash and the coins were bored out and are lying alongside. Even then they suggested the modern passion for gold in times of acute danger. People pinch gold even now, as did the poor fool who hoped to get away with it iu a blinding volcanic storm. What's I the good of being rich for five minutes and j ending up as a museum piece on a marble slab?

Admiring reference has been made herein to the everyday men who use edged tools without committing suicide, of the men who shaved the wharf pile THE SHARP with an adze, birt not of EDGE, the axeman who shaved his mate with a sevenpound blade. Of course, the modern axeman did not swing his blade per handle when he was shaving Bill. If you remember, the only barber who t shaved a man by chopping at him was Umslopogaas, who pruned a Frenchman's long moustaches—with an axe—but very likely the only edged tool Rider Haggard had personal experience of was a pen. The Duke of Gloucester was more intrigued with the devilish accuracy of Australian crack axemen than •with seventeen illuminated addresses spoken by seventeen mayors, and he even _ got permission to put a scarf in a gumlog on a sheep station. Here is a photograph in an Australian paper showing Lord Huntingfield running an aristocratic finger along the edge of an axe held by the hefty champion, A. Hicks. I The picture is curious not only because the admiring Governor of Victoria is a born Queenslander, but because the axe doesn't look a bit Australian—one of the "two-bitted" straight-handled Canadian pattern. You'd I have to watch your step standing on a log whirling a two-hladed axe, one razor edge ready for you to fall on should you slip. Axes don't care who use them. One of the cracks best remembered was a little chap about eight stone six with one arm. He'd s'pit on his lone paw and chop evens with the best. One of the cleverest choppers one has seen in Xew Zealand was a fifty years old publican with a protrusion under his waistcoat like a Rugby ball. Then, of course, there are Bernard Shaw, the Kaiser, and there was W. E. Gladstone. THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. He that keepeth the commandment keepeth his own soul; but he that despisctli, his Ways shall die.—Proverbs. The greatest ornament ot an illustrious life is modesty and-humility.—Anon. What big things hang on a smile and a. cheery word, no man can ever say.--Wilfred Grcnfell.